Kennett Pike, aka Route 52, was the most direct route that Thomas Garrett could have taken from his home in Wilmington to the Longwood Progressive Friends Meeting, organized in 1853 in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, just three miles from the Delaware line. The founding members of Longwood Meeting were 58 local and national Friends who shared a commitment to the abolition of slavery and took the further step of becoming active Underground Railroad agents. Not all Quakers believed in breaking the Fugitive Slave Law to assist freedom seekers.

Garrett wrote that he forwarded freedom seekers along the Kennett Pike to relatives of his wife, Rachel – Isaac and Dinah Mendenhall—two leading abolitionists whose home, “Oakdale,” was the first “stop” north of the Delaware state line on the Underground Railroad. Garrett and his agents also favored the safety of the nearby John and Hannah Cox home, “Longwood.” The Coxes gave land in 1854 for the meeting house of the same name.